The Switch

by Diane Whiteside

  Beth was shaking after her own release. A thin trickle of blood ran down her hand from where she’d bitten her knuckle. She tried to catch her breath.

  An electronic ring cut through their silence and Beth jumped. She looked around and grabbed her purse off the desk, fumbling to stop the cell phone.

  “Damn, not another one of Holly’s so-called emergencies,” she cursed, rapidly pressing buttons that seemed all too small at the moment. “Yes,” she snapped, bringing the phone up to her ear. The answering voice bewildered her. “Mr. Griffith?”

  Beth took a deep breath and tried to think. Why was her office’s director calling?

  “Yes, of course I remember that meeting in September,” she assured him. Her eyes glanced over to see Sean slowly sliding his jeans back up his hips. She swallowed and yanked her attention back to the voice in her ear.

  “Yes, I’d be honored to represent Treasury…Tomorrow morning at eight is fine. No, it won’t conflict with the conference…”

  Sean finished fastening his jeans and looked at the wet scarf in his hand. Hot color blazed across his cheekbones. Beth followed his eyes to the scarf and lust pooled again between her legs. Somehow she kept talking, hoping that she made sense.

  “Can you get me directions to the FBI offices? Thanks…Certainly I’ll let you know what happens. Good night.”

  Beth snapped the phone shut. Finally she had an opportunity to get involved in the hunt for terrorists. But all she really wanted to do was put her hands on Sean again.

  “I’ll have this cleaned for you. When can I give it back to you?” Sean asked.

  “There’s a reception tonight to kick off the conference so I couldn’t get back here until ten or so.” Hunger echoed in her words.

  Sean brightened at the promise of another encounter.

  “Just come back here as soon as you’re done. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Are you sure the bookstore will be open? The neighborhood is a little rough.”

  “I’m the landlord so it’ll be open,” Sean smiled at her.

  “Okay.” Landlord? He looked like a janitor.

  “If you can’t make it, call me at this number.” She handed him a business card, which he took without taking his eyes from hers. He fumbled in his back pocket and managed to produce a business card that she accepted wordlessly.

  Beth finished gathering up her books and stepped towards the door before coming to a stop in front of him. She reached up her hand and gently ran her finger across his mouth. He stroked her finger with the tip of his tongue.

  “Save the scarf for then, hunh?” she suggested softly. He smiled down at her.

  “Anything you say, ma’am. Anything at all.”

  Chapter Two

  Monday, 5 PM

  Sean sagged back onto the desk an instant after the door closed behind Beth. The bravado that had kept him standing after that incredible rush disappeared with the sound of her departing feet.

  Had it been a dream?

  He looked at the card in his hand. Two lines of script showed: Elizabeth Nakamura and a Washington, DC phone number. A single rose lay at the bottom, etched in gold and complete with thorns.

  He smiled wryly. Fair warning, but he’d risk thorns any day for a rose like her. What games did she want to play when she handed out a card like that? His cock stirred eagerly at the thought.

  He’d jacked off as assiduously as any other Ranger during his time in the Army. He’d collected more than his share of memorable jacks along the way from those solitary exercises: the Panama Jack, the Gulf Jack, the Somalia Jack, the C-17 Jack, and more. But none of those compared to jacking off while she observed, then realizing that she’d climaxed from watching him.

  Of course, it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman in any fashion. Twelve years since he and Tiffany agreed they shouldn’t sleep together, given the discomfort from her second stroke. To tell the truth, staying out of Tiffany’s bed hadn’t changed much in his life except for killing any hope that she’d come to enjoy sex.

  But Beth had blown all the old memories out of his mind. Thankfully, she hadn’t been put off by his clumsy behavior. He shook his head, remembering how he’d fumbled the ball in the bookstore. Then he’d heard her voice again, seducing him into the backroom.

  Not that he needed much encouragement. It had been so easy to follow her lead, measuring the electricity rising between them by the heat in his cock and the fire in her eyes.

  “Thanks, Adam,” he whispered to his friend’s ghost. Adam had left his family’s real estate business, including this building, to Sean, shrugging off assurances that he’d live for years to come. “I’ve tried to keep my word to you; guess you just threw in a new twist.”

  Live for both of us, Adam had demanded on that last evening. If anything happens to me, you live for both of us. He’d died the next afternoon, shot down by a Somali mob.

  “What’s his status?” The voice crackled again in Sean’s memories. There was a long pause, filled with other desperate voices over the radio, before the answer came.

  “KIA.” Killed in Action. Silence. All the other Rangers listening in had carefully not looked at Sean, giving him time to regain his composure. Then he chivvied them into motion; there was a lot of work to be done to get their remaining brethren home safely. He’d been fiercely glad to go out with the rescue convoy.

  He looked at the scarf, crumpled up in his hand, before lifting it to his nose. His musk was there but so was a spicy sweetness, evoking womanhood. More woman than he’d ever hoped to encounter. And she’d cared about him and his comfort, enough to give him the clothes off her back. That act alone made Beth totally different from Mrs. Wolcott and her demands on his high school ignorance.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, dragging her scent in and memorizing it.

  Beth. Female. Treasury, working with the FBI. Dangerous lady. A skillful, experienced, successful leader, as his cock would gladly attest. Hopefully, he’d see what lay under that proper black suit tonight.

  He laughed when his phone rang. At least this interruption had waited until Beth left. A quick flip of his wrist and Caller ID told him who sought him.

  “Yeah, Mike,” he answered.

  “Hi, Dad. Mrs. Hemmings just called to say that she’ll be here in twenty minutes to see the furniture.”

  “I’ll be home by then. If she gets there first, just show her the guest room.”

  “No problem, Dad.”

  “Mike.” He hesitated.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “You got any problem selling your mother’s old bedroom furniture?”

  “Nah, it just reminds me of how she was so trapped in it at the end. I’d rather remember her in other ways, like how she taught me to cook.”

  “Okay, Mike, if you’re sure.” Sean let his voice trail off, inviting Mike to say more if he needed to.

  “Oh, I’m positive. It’s time for us both to clean house and move on. Me to West Point, God willing. And you to, well, something all your own.” Mike was very calm, as he usually was on this subject. But he’d always been older than his years.

  Sean flinched slightly, not as much as the other times when Mike mentioned the coming changes. Still, he’d rather hunt Scuds in Iraq again, than enter the dating game for the first time. Tiffany’s pregnancy had yanked him into matrimony before he’d ever seriously looked for a lover.

  “Hey, you’ll get in,” Sean managed to reply, trying to deflect the conversation.

  “If not, then I’ll enlist.” Sean could almost hear Mike’s verbal shrug.

  “We’ve talked about this before, Mike,” Sean snorted. “College first, then the Army.”

  “And I’ve said this before. Army will pay for college, while I’m in. One way or another, I’m in the Army next fall.”

  “Mike…”

  “There’re things to be done, Dad. And all I’ve ever wanted was to be Army.”

  “Yeah,” Sean conceded the last point. Time to end
this subject for the moment. “I’ll be home in ten. See ya.”

  Sean closed the phone. Was it easier to think about Mike’s departure with a woman’s silks in his hand?

  He pulled his pickup to a stop in back of his small house and ran inside, leaving the scarf on the truck’s seat. He could see Mike in the kitchen, talking to Deirdre Hemmings while he stirred a simmering pot. Sean stooped to greet Dudley with an ear rub. Dudley was too old now to jump up in welcome, as his Golden Retriever warmth demanded and was delighted when his humans came to him.

  “Hello, Deirdre, Mike.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hello, Sean,” Deirdre responded. She was a good-looking blonde a few years older than Sean, still wearing scrubs from her nursing job. Her daughter Carol, Mike’s girlfriend, would look just like her in another twenty years. “Mike makes a spectacular spaghetti sauce. I wish I cooked the way he does.”

  “It’s just the way Mom taught me,” Mike shrugged.

  “Good thing too,” Sean agreed. “I can manage microwaves and heating MREs; nothing else. Can I get you anything, Deirdre?”

  “No, thank you. I just wanted to run over and see the furniture before Tracy gets home from ballet class.”

  “Why don’t we go up and look at it then?” Sean suggested.

  Moments later, they were upstairs in the tiny guest room hidden under the eaves. The white and gilt furniture gleamed in the filtered light from the skylights. He’d had the additional windows installed when an old Army buddy, now a Delta Force operator, came to visit. Rick loved to sleep under the stars and Sean didn’t want him to feel confined. At least, no more cramped than that bed made anyone over six feet feel.

  Deirdre stopped in the doorway, staring at the bedroom suite.

  “Wow,” she managed, moving forward to finger the lace canopy. “It’s gorgeous, Sean. Tracy will love it.”

  “Good. I can drop the set off at your house on Friday morning, if Dave can help me unload it. It’s all solid wood.”

  “Oh yes, he’ll be there. It’s the perfect present for Tracy’s tenth birthday. I just can’t believe you’d have anything like this in your house. How did you find it?”

  “Tiffany bought it while I was in AIT,” he answered, referring to his time in Infantry Advanced Individual Training. Fourteen weeks of high summer in Georgia, enduring days with a heat index over one hundred fifteen degrees, while the Army made him into an infantryman. And Tiffany tried to find something she liked about being a military wife. “I refinished it like this after Mike was born so it was just the way she wanted.”

  “Were the bedspread and canopy hers too? The pink ruffles and lace canopy are lovely but they don’t look like you.”

  “She picked them out on her last birthday. But the mattress and springs are new since Tiffany’s death. It was cheaper to replace them than get them cleaned, after she’d been bedridden for so long. They’re seven years old but they’ve only been lightly used.”

  Deirdre nodded, still stroking the pink brocade.

  “Tiffany must have loved this, even when she was sick. A double bed will be huge for Tracy but you must have folded up like a pretzel to fit.”

  Sean’s mouth twisted. Pretzel was a good description for the times he hadn’t just hung his feet over the end. Tiffany’s petite frame had fit neatly.

  He wondered what Beth would look like in this bed and laughed silently at himself. He doubted he’d notice the furniture if Beth was undressed.

  “That must be why Mike says he remembers you sleeping on the floor in his room so often when he was a kid,” Deirdre mused.

  So Mike remembered that? Well, Sean had done it often enough. The floor had felt like heaven after training or field exercises. It had also been blessedly free of Tiffany’s whining.

  “Can I have the bedspread and canopy? Tracy’s such a frilly girl, unlike Carol, that she’ll probably like it.”

  Sean roused himself, glad to move on.

  “Sure, we won’t use it. I’ll get it cleaned and bring it on Friday too.”

  “Thanks. We’ll be glad to pay for the cleaning.”

  “Don’t worry about it. That’s just part of taking the bed.”

  Sean hesitated for a minute. Carol and her mother were very pragmatic but Tracy had seemed more fanciful on the few occasions they’d spoken.

  “Something else, Deirdre.”

  Deirdre looked back at him, poised to start downstairs.

  “Tiffany always wanted a daughter, a little blonde princess to giggle and shop with. She’d be glad Tracy has the bed. And tell Tracy that Tiffany didn’t die in this bed. The aneurysm broke while she was at the doctor’s office and she died in the hospital.”

  Deirdre patted him on the arm.

  “Thanks, Sean. I’m sure she wouldn’t have worried about Tiffany’s ghost but now, she can just think happy thoughts about this bed.”

  Sean nodded and stayed silent, glad that somebody had happy thoughts about this bed. He saw Deirdre out and went back into the kitchen, where he grabbed a beer. Tiffany’s last traces would be out of the house on Friday, except for a few photos, all but two in Mike’s room.

  “When’s dinner?”

  “Give you five minutes and then I’ll start the noodles, okay?” Mike answered, his husky frame barely fitting into the tiny kitchen.

  “Great,” Sean answered and headed down the hall. All busted condoms should produce results like Mike, he thought, not for the first time.

  He automatically shifted his shoulders to avoid brushing the family photos on the wall, which Mike had hung when they moved in. He paused to straighten a favorite, remembering his family’s beginning.

  He’d been back in that small Dakota town for Christmas, his first leave from West Point. He’d partied hard with Tiffany, both talking about their plans; general for him and movie star for Tiffany.

  Later they’d gone to a back bedroom, clumsy with inexperience and alcohol. He could still hear Tiffany’s hysteria when the condom broke and his promise to stand by her and the baby, if there was one.

  He’d gained a family that night but Tiffany had lost hers. Her father had thrown her out when he learned she was pregnant and had never seen his grandson.

  Their wedding picture hung on this wall: Tiffany in black, her pregnancy as blatant as her tear stains, and him in his sergeant’s uniform, hours after being released from West Point.

  Mike’s birth picture held center place, with Tiffany’s usual anger and resentment briefly washed away by the miracle of birth. He’d been exhausted and ecstatic when holding his son, after being snatched out of the field during AIT for the birth. It was the happiest time he’d ever known with Tiffany, two weeks before the first stroke hit her and slightly paralyzed her face and right leg.

  She had avoided cameras after that.

  It had been the first of eight strokes, although so many people had spoken to her about changing her behavior. Sean had tried everything he could think of to get her to stop drinking, stop smoking, eat better, and try to live long enough to see Mike grow up.

  But Tiffany had continued to do what she found easiest, while hiding the traces as much as possible. Teaching Mike to cook had helped her eating habits, the only real change she ever made.

  There were more pictures of Mike, taken whenever Sean made it home on a birthday or holiday; they were usually outdoors—hiking, camping, fishing, or hunting – with Dudley always laughing happily at the camera. It was still surprising that Mike had chosen those memories for this wall, rather than school pictures.

  And there was Mike’s eleventh birthday, the last picture of the three of them together. It centered on Mike proudly showing off his black belt in karate, grinning from ear to ear. Sean had carefully looked him over, making sure that every pleat was precisely placed in the white cotton and the black silk belt perfectly tied. Then Mike had demanded to inspect his father’s turnout, checking every detail against an old manual that he’d managed to squirrel away.

  So th
ere was the master sergeant’s uniform, three chevrons and three rockers on his left sleeve. Four hash marks on Sean’s left cuff, for his twelve years of enlisted service. Black beret with his Ranger battalion badge. The Ranger tab and scroll on his left shoulder, with the scroll again on his right shoulder and its memories of Panama. Silver Star and a Bronze Star with oak leaf, including a V for Valor. A Purple Heart, thanks to the Gulf War. Four rows of ribbons in all over his left breast, plus those unit citations above his right pocket.

  Combat Infantry badge above his gleaming Master parachutist wings, complete with a gold star for that nasty combat jump into Panama. Pathfinder and Expert Marksmanship badges, sitting side by side on the flap of his left pocket.

  Sean had stood at attention and kept a poker face while Mike approved the placement of every element with a ruler. Then he’d helped Tiffany into the photographer’s armchair and taken her walker beyond the camera’s relentless memory.

  The picture showed Tiffany in her favorite sky-blue dress, her makeup as much art as anything in the photographer’s portfolio. She’d practiced her expression and her posture in front of a mirror, hiding the effects of eleven years of strokes, pain, and careless living on her once fairy-tale prettiness.

  The most recent photo showed Mike in his football uniform, poised to throw the football. It hung next to the picture of Sean’s grandfather in his Ranger uniform, standing among the prisoners of war that he’d rescued in the Philippines.

  Sean touched the realigned picture with a gentle finger.

  “I met a lady today, Mom. I’m going to see her again. I think you’d like her,” he whispered.

  His mother smiled back at him, caught by the camera, three weeks before a drunk driver mowed her down and left Sean alone in the world.

  He took the stairs two at a time, whistling.

  Sean quickly stripped beside his big waterbed and got into the hot shower, still whistling. He washed himself automatically, reliving his earlier encounter in Gary’s bookstore.

  Who’d have thought to find a beauty like that among dusty books? She looked both exotic and familiar with those high cheekbones under the enormous dark eyes. Her hair was a hood of living black silk framing her face and protecting her vulnerable long neck. Her red mouth was the most carnal invitation he’d ever seen, especially when it closed around her fist as she watched him come. She’d smelled like some spicy new temptation from the Orient when he’d stood next to her, pretending to look at books. She was tall enough that he wouldn’t worry about hurting her if they lay together. Her curves were rich, promising to fill his hands.